Vilsack: GMO wheat report due in ‘very near term’

Eric Mortenson/Capital Press
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said a GMO wheat report is expected in the "very near term."

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack acknowledges a GMO wheat investigation, now 15 months old, may not answer every question.

PORTLAND — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he expects a report
on the GMO wheat found in Eastern Oregon last year in the “very near
term” but cautioned it may contain some question marks.“I’m not sure we’re going to have every answer,” Vilsack said.Vilsack,
in Portland to discuss the USDA’s new Regional Conservation Partnership
Program, said his department is working in the meantime to foster
coexistence between growers of conventional and genetically engineered
crops. Vilsack revived the department’s Advisory Committee on
Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture for that purpose.The
discovery of GMO wheat last year temporarily disrupted the international
export market crucial to Pacific Northwest growers. The USDA’s Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service has been working on the
investigation for 15 months.

Producers have consistently said they don’t
want markets threatened again by having a “bomb” dropped on them — a
report that shows GMO contamination elsewhere, for example — during
harvest this year.The investigation began in April 2013 when an
Eastern Oregon grower noticed that some volunteer wheat plants he
sprayed with glyphosate did not die as expected. The 125-acre field had
been planted with certified seed in October 2011 and harvested in the
summer of 2012, and was lying fallow when they farmer sprayed it — a
common practice to control weeds.Tests at Oregon State
University, confirmed by APHIS, showed the plants were a “Roundup Ready”
variety developed by Monsanto Co. to withstand the key ingredient in
its herbicide.Monsanto field-tested the variety in 16 states,
including Oregon, from 1998 to 2005, but withdrew its application to
have it approved because farmers objected. The last testing in Oregon
was in 2001, however, and the field where the plants were found was not a
test site, which only deepened the mystery.Buyers in Japan,
South Korea and Taiwan, the chief markets for Pacific Northwest wheat,
are strongly opposed to GMO food products.Monsanto says its
testing protocol was rigidly controlled and that genetically engineered
crops pose no hazard to food or feed. APHIS says there’s been no more
GMO wheat found and no evidence that it got into commerce. Beyond that,
the agency has been silent.